I plan to use this category of my blog as a kind of sub-site to track the building of this delightful new transceiver kit from Hans Summers G0UPL and his QRP Labs. Since its launch in late August when all stock sold out in a day, sales of the QCX CW Transceiver continue at a pace that still surprises the developer as he prepares his fourth batch of 500 kits.
It is a feature packed design focused on delivering an up to 5-watt single band CW transceiver. It includes built-in test equipment to be used during alignment and the QCX can be used as a WSPR beacon.
It’s such a compact design – the PCB is 102 x 81mm with a hard working blue 16 x 2 backlit LCD display – and with its tiny onboard microswitch that can be used a key, it should probably be renamed the QTX!
It boasts a long list of design features that seem amazing for the modest price of US$49. They include a Class E power amplifier, 7 element Low Pass Filter, CW envelope shaping free of key clicks, at least 50dB of unwanted sideband cancellation, a sharp 200Hz CW filter, Si5351A Synthesized VFO with rotary encoder tuning down to 1Hz, Iambic keyer or straight key option, CW decoder, displayed real-time on-screen, S-meter, Full or semi QSK operation, Frequency presets, VFO A/B Split operation, RIT, configurable CW Offset, Configurable sidetone frequency and volume and can be connected to a GPS interface for reference frequency calibration and time-keeping (for WSPR beacon)!
Also super impressive is the quality of the 138-page long assembly instructions that make Heathkit style instructions seem abrupt! Nothing else comes close to the thoroughness of this document. As well as getting a radio that works, Hans clearly wants builders to understand how it works and why he chose the components he did. Prospective builders can download it freely from his site.
Firmware for the ATmega328P microcontroller is up to version 1.00B and available from the QRP Labs groups.io group. It is not open source.
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